After launching their public beta back in January, co-founders David Chait and Chris Davis have been working to make Travefy the go-to option for planning a group trip. Since then, they’ve introduced a major redesign and distilled the user experience to a dead-simple interface.

Recently the pair gained some major support in bringing their vision to the jet-setting masses: Travefy just closed a $320,000 seed round of funding, including investments from the Nebraska Angels, Nebraska Global, Nelnet, Columbia University and other angel backers.

Much of the capital will be used to hire two full-time employees, doubling Travefy’s staff. Those positions will be filled by Scott Rutz, a designer who most recently worked at Nelnet, and Matt Posvar, who’s leaving his position as lead web developer.

“They’ve been working with us for almost a year now in a moonlighting fashion, so with this raise they will be able to join us full time,” Chait told Silicon Prairie News. “We’re really excited to double our staff and to scale the team at such a critical time for us.”

Travefy plans to use the funds to take their product out of public beta and into the stages of a more formal launch. During this time the team will focus more directly on adoption in key markets, including college students. This round of seed funding follows previous angel investment by Omaha-based Linseed Capital as well as a grant from the Nebraska Innovation Fund.

The app also has a number of new features on the horizon. The one closest to market is their all-encompassing finance tool, which helps manage who pays who, whether it’s for dinner or a hotel room.

“When you have a trip you’re going to have lots of these different sorts of expenses come in and it’s very difficult to keep track,” Chait said. “I could owe six different people money and five people could owe me money by the end of the trip.”

The service analyzes the costs that users input and internally running an algorithm that calculates what each individual’s net fee is before sending them the bill. Right now the app is browser-based, but the final product will have different levels of mobile responsiveness built in.

“It solves one of the biggest and most awkward headaches that exists, which is asking people for money,” Chait said.

LINCOLN—Rain poured on the metal roof, thunder crashed and a microphone went on the fritz—a distraction that temporarily threw off Ryan Cooper’s five-minute pitch for Adolade.

But after NMotion managing director Brian Ardinger handed him a new mic, Cooper picked up right where he left off, spitting facts about sales and market size.

The minor hiccup and seamless transition back into the pitch could serve as a larger metaphor for the seven NMotion accelerator startups that pitched during Tuesday’s Demo Day.

Almost every team had a hiccup along the way: a pivot, discovering a customer that wasn’t really there, a name change, a team change.

It appears each overcame those obstacles before the end of the 100-day accelerator. But Tuesday, the audience of 360 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s new Innovation Campus largely approved of the teams’ efforts.

Panelist Bart Dillashaw, an attorney who works with startups, refused to pick a winner.

“Each articulated what they did well. They showed the problems. I’ve watched these companies from the beginning and all have made crazy progress in 100 days.”

Ardinger said from year one to year two, teams had a lot more early traction, got more done and the community had a lot more excitement about the program. It was evident Tuesday: attendance doubled from last year. The accelerator got 80 percent more applications the second round.

“Word is getting around the greater Lincoln community that startups matter,” Ardinger told SPN after the event.

Each had individual milestones, too. Overall, five of the teams got prototype grants from the Nebraska Dept. of Economic Development. None disclosed any potential funding, however.

The three out-of-state teams, Commissioner from Toronto, MowDo from Chicago and Seattle and Fanstreamm from Cedar Rapids, praised Lincoln. Ardinger said Commissioner’s co-founders are trying to secure visas to stay. MowDo will head south for the winter to capture more warm-weather markets, but hope to have a presence in Nebraska. Fanstreamm may go back to Cedar Rapids, but Ardinger hopes they’ll stay.

Here’s a few notes from each team’s presentation Tuesday:

Team: Husband and wife team: Kurt Knecht and Jennifer Rosenblatt

Hometown: Lincoln

Twitter: @hearMusicSpoke

Quick pitch: Helping composers keep more revenue from their work through an marketplace.

Notes: The book industry has changed. The music industry has changed. Sheet music has not changed. The traditional sales model involves long ship times, hard to find items and suppliers keep 92 percent of the profits. MusicSpoke is the world’s largest marketplace for sheet music distribution and allows composers to keep more. Kurt Knecht is a composer.

Team: Vishal Singh
Hometown: Lincoln
Twitter: None

Quick pitch: Fitbit for cattle. Sensors and data platform for the cattle industry.

Traction: Letter of intent from feedlots representing 32,000 head of cattle. Got a prototype grant to create the data tracking device.

Notes: Uses Fitbit-like tech to take the guesswork out of identifying sick cattle. Also tracks weather data, temperatures, the movement of a cow and more. There are more than 4.5 million sick cattle every year, with 2 percent dying from it. The $2,200 value of each cow adds up to $3.2 billion in annual loss from just the feedlots, not counting dairy or rangeland cows. Revenue comes from subscription service and the purchase of sensors.

The company pivoted from using drones to Fitbit-like tags to get the same data. Same problem, different solution. “It made sense to piggyback onto a process that feedlots already do (tagging cows). We just add a chip into the tags.” Used to be called PixoBot.

Traction: With a $20.5 billion-dollar lawn care market, the potential is big. They’ve signed up and arranged mowings for customer lawns in nine different states with signups in 20 other states. On average, the cost is $45 per lawn, twice a month. That’s only part of it. They’re exploring more services, like leaf removal, fertilization, aeration and more. Adding those markets makes it a $74 billion industry. They’ve got paying customers.

Notes: Mowdo pivoted from Athletepreneur, a program that aimed to help former college athletes and train them to become entrepreneurs through mentorship, events and more. Dzingai is a former Olympic runner. The pair from Seattle and Chicago are heading south for the winter to gain new markets that need lawn care year-round. More on Mowdo from SPN.

Traction: Fanstreamm created a mobile app for the Lincoln Saltdogs baseball team and is working with the Lincoln Stars hockey team. They’ve been able to sell tickets through the app. They’ve talked with more than 150 teams during their research phase. With more than 15,000 minor league venues, Fanstreamm has a lot of potential teams and a $5 billion market to work with.

Notes: Fanstreamm hopes to take the headache of organizing, buying and getting paid back out of group ticketing. “It shouldn’t take 33 text messages, 12 emails and five phone calls to organize only to have four people not show up and you’re out $45.” More than 43 percent of tickets go unsold at an average minor league game. Fanstreamm aims to fix that through deals and easy organization. They plan on white labeling the platform for teams. Read more about Fanstreamm on SPN.

Fanstreamm pivoted from Turnstile Cards, which was created during a startup weekend and aimed to create digital baseball cards. Kristufek’s co-founder decided to part ways during NMotion.

Traction: With monthly subscriptions as the main revenue driver, oneCanvas has already validated the idea before going into development. Potential customers include photographers, real estate agents and web design firms. Carlson said there isn’t a good mobile solution for digital scrapbooking—Photoshop is too complicated for most. There are more than 22 million digital scrapbookers in the U.S. and they spend $2.4 billion a year.

Notes: oneCanvas started out as DigiWidgets, a web customization program that won Jumpstart Lincoln. However, the DigiWidget teams, Carl Steffen and Stacy Carlson, split. Carlson, who has already had traction in the digital scrapbook space before, created oneCanvas. Steffen continues to run DigiWidgets and is involved in NMotion but did not present Tuesday.

Gottapixel, Carlson’s first business, started out as a hobby before becoming profitable with 50,000 users.

Asked about the trend of digital scrapbooking, she pointed to the leading brick and mortar scrapbook franchise going bankrupt this year. Why? The CEO said it was because of the shift to the web.

Quick pitch: Analytics and player evaluation software for coaches and athletes.

Traction: Signed up 6,000 beta users in a week. Subscriptions run $10 a month. Obtained a Nebraska prototype grant to build the product.

Notes: Kids from 8 to 16 years old have the best chance at developing skills as a player, but club sport coaches are often too busy to give real feedback. Commissioner is a mobile app for coaches, parents, clubs and players to track progress on certain skills. Right now, Commissioner is focusing on youth soccer, since it’s the largest youth sport with an average of $5,000 spent per year, per player. Coaches can quickly evaluate players in real time, clubs can know who to call up to the next level and who needs work, parents can get feedback immediately and players can track their progress.

Traction: Signed up his first customer, former Husker quarterback Taylor Martinez, who is using the ad/rewards platform on his new mobile game, Stupid Fast. The mobile ad market will be a $42 billion industry by 2017.

Notes: About 99 percent of developers find apps unsuccessful because they don’t retain users or can’t monetize. Within a month, only 40 percent of people still use it. After a year, only 4 percent still use it. Adolade hopes to move mobile ads forward by making them more effective through a moment-based approach that captures users in their most engaged times, like when they get a high score in a game. Advertisers can then offer a deal or sample product like sunglasses. More than 85 percent of people in a survey said they like that type of interaction more than a banner ad.

This is Cooper’s second startup. His first was a similar rewards program for golfers called Golf Status. Read more about Adolade on SPN.

Founder Friday is a weekly guest post written by a founder who is based in or hails from the Silicon Prairie. Each month, a topic relevant to startups is presented and founders share lessons learned or best practices utilized on that topic. September’s topic is how to market your startup without a full-time marketing department.

About the author: Zach Meissner is the co-founder and COO of RaceNote, an Omaha-based software company that serves the motorsports industry.

Go fast. Turn left. Repeat.

When one thinks of motorsports, it’s highly likely that NASCAR comes to mind. While many people know about the top tier level of racing, there is an entire sub-world where the greats are incubated and grow to maturity to become the drivers and teams you see on TV. Many of the successes in the upper echelons of racing can be attributed to starting out in dirt track modified, late model and sprint car racing.

This is the niche market RaceNote primarily serves and markets to.

The art of marketing takes on many different shapes, sizes, and strategies. And for RaceNote, it’s no different. As a software company, we create solutions and platforms for motorsports teams to help take better notes and communicate more effectively.

For us to communicate effectively as a company, marketing plays a vital role. At this point, we don’t have full time staff dedicated to marketing, so we’ve had to be creative in our efforts to get the word out.

Being a young and relatively unknown company, establishing trust and serving an underserved market have been our main goals. The racing community is fairly close knit, so trust is a big deal when trying to break into this market. We’ve been very fortunate to work with some great drivers and teams that have helped to establish us as being a “friend” to the community. We’ve been very careful to talk with teams, instead of talking at them by simply pitching our product with an ad.

Ideas that flow downhill gain momentum.

We market through several different channels and mediums, but it all starts with the idea of appearing bigger than we actually are. We work to accomplish this through three main themes; credibility, track presence and social value.

Credibility: The racing community is very keen to notice the top teams and drivers, and what makes them that way. There are many trade secrets as everyone is looking for an edge on race night. So much so, that when the cars are parked in the pits, a tarp is placed over the rear to cover the chassis area where you can see how the weights are distributed underneath.

We’ve been able to team up with one of the best dirt late model teams and a premier parts company to create weekly Tech Tip videos. These are short one or two minute videos giving tips on how to set up the racecar and run better on the track. Being in association with these partners has helped tremendously in establishing credibility. Not only by featuring them in helpful videos, but by them actually using the product as well.

Track Presence: The motorsports industry is a very face-to-face market. It’s hard to sell a product in this market without pounding the pavement for a bit. We travel to many of the big races throughout the season in a 39-foot RV, and are usually able to secure a spot in the pits next to the teams. By us simply being there and talking with teams and drivers face to face, we have been able to put names to faces and get real world feedback.

Social Value: Like many startups, providing something useful above and beyond what you’re selling is a great way to work a foothold into getting organic market share. Our social media presence has increased significantly over the last six months thanks in large part to our intern and now first employee, Kyle Tautenhan.

Kyle deserves much of the credit for creating and maintaining articles and graphics that have been shared around the racing community. He has done a great job in positioning RaceNote as a company that has a rooting and active interest in the sport.

Using these three main strategies, we’ve been able to create a bigger footprint than our shoes actually make. This is a good thing because it’s showed us that we can create great leverage with few resources by simply putting the marketing fulcrum in the right place. We certainly owe a large debt of gratitude to many people who have helped us get to this point with the limited resources we’ve had.

Laura Classen, executive director of theNebraska Angels, put on a clinic Thursday, telling about 30 entrepreneurs and other attendees how the Angels and angel investment works.

The talk was a part of theSpark Series, a set of entrepreneurial talks at Union Bank and Trust’sCatalystspace in Lincoln.

Classen talked “Angel Investing 101,” discussing how startups go about raising angel funds, the life cycle of startup capital needs and when to reach out for investment.

The Nebraska Angels group was founded in 2006 at the forefront of the angel movement. Classen is in charge of sourcing deals to see if they’re a good fit for the group.

There are 55 local, active investors who work together to find new deals and negotiate terms. Over the past two years, the Angels have deployed $4 million in capital, investing in early-stage, high-growth opportunities.

On average, the Angels do about eight deals a year in new and follow-on funding for mostly local startups. Members decide individually whether or not to invest in an opportunity.

But just like startups, the failure rate for angel investors isn’t good either. Nearly 80 percent of deals are money losers.

But Classen said angels are usually people who have reasons more than trying to make a buck.

“They are high-risk, high-reward, long-term investments,” Classen said. “But usually they like to give back and like the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs because many angels once were entrepreneurs themselves.”

Angels have to be accredited to be in the Nebraska Angels, meaning they have to meet a certain wealth threshold or make more than $200,000 in income per year.

Usually the angels invest in early seed rounds for scalable, high-growth companies. Investments usually range from $250,000 to $3 million and come with the benefit of the angels’ network, connections and expertise.

“We often call it the friends, families and fools round,” Classen said.

The investment process

Companies apply to the angels and Classen vets and meets with the startups for about two hours before they attend small meetings with a handful of investors. Then, if they are interested, they move on to a larger meeting with the entire group at Quarry Oaks in Ashland. Investors see about four pitches at those larger meetings and then individual investors rate opportunities and their interest in each company.

She said timing is important for when a startup approaches the angels.

“It’s like a first date—you want it to go well and have a good first impression,” she said. “If you don’t and it’s not the right timing or you bomb the pitch, the second time you come back is harder.”

But for the startups, it’s ideal to wait as long as possible before they seek angel investment.

More than 300 companies apply to the Angels every year, but only about 150 meet their criteria. The process can take anywhere from a month to three months to complete.

Most angel investors invest during a startup’s “Valley of Death,” the time after a product launch but before it makes money. Usually, most startups find grants like the Small Business Innovation Research grants to get a concept going.

But there’s three things the Angels need to see before putting in money: a customer, a CTO in a tech startup and a solid team.

The best applicants

They know their industry and are experts in their space.

The problem they’re solving is real and their solution is a good one.

It’s more about the team than the company or idea.

One of the Angels’ best investments have been EyeVerify, a KC biometric security startup, that also recently got investment from Sprint, Samsung and more. Their pre-money valuation was $40 million.

They haven’t had any cash exits, but Classen says there’s hope in growing companies, like EyeVerify.

Other consumer products haven’t fared so well and crashed before becoming profitable, Classen says.

Audience Q&A

On partnerships: The angels also are connected with groups in Alabama, Iowa and Texas and occasionally come together to do group deals.

On gauging success: They do track company goals, but sometimes it is hard to figure out what metrics to track for each company. Success looks different to different companies.

On finding more members: The angels usually find new members through referrals.

On angel vs. VC process: It’s a similar level of scrutiny. But angel investment feels less like 1-on-1 dating because you don’t work with the same investor every time. It’s also more structured since the Angels meet on set dates.

On the next five years: She hopes they’ll be going strong and hope to engage more people outside of Omaha and Lincoln.

Cheatham said the process with MAA was collaborative and streamlined, and always remained transparent and comfortable. The group also referred him and his team to SeedStep.

“I went down and met with the group in Oklahoma City and Tulsa,” he told SPN. “They have a very efficient process and I loved meeting with this group. I even had to pitch one of the groups in my shorts—my suit pants went missing—and they still invested! Very forgiving bunch.”

Cheatman was inspired to start ClaimKit after working as a surety attorney, managing millions of dollars in claims on his own. The bottlenecks caused by poor software and messy documents set him up to create something that could bring sanity to the process.

Now he’s looking to take software that has already helped manage $2 billion in claims to the next level.

“We will be focusing on two things,” he said. “First, we will be pushing out the ClaimKit solutions to more surety companies. We are confident we can save the sureties money and we will show them how. Second, we will be taking the next step with our software. We are developing the next versions and platforms that will make the life of a claim professional easier.

This round of financing also will enable ClaimKit to add to its staff. It’s the fourth investment closed by MAA this year, totaling almost $2 million in funding for area startups and high-growth businesses.

KANSAS CITY—It looks like we now know who the “undisclosed banking institution” was from EyeVerify’s $6 million round in July. Wells Fargo announced Wednesday that the Kansas City-based startup will be part of its inaugural six-month accelerator class for companies looking to pioneer financial services technology.

“We were already working with them when they came up with it,” EyeVerify CEO Toby Rush told SPN. “This is much more about partnering with companies than what you think of as a typical accelerator.”

The first class opens with three teams, selected without an application process, and teams will receive between $50,000 and $500,000 for participating—under a non-exclusive agreement. The goal is to provide mentorship so that one day the companies can serve as vendors. The banking industry can be a challenge to understand and plan for as a young company, and Wells Fargo wants to help them through the security and regulation issues that can be hard to plan for. Locating at the Wells Fargo office in San Francisco is not required.

“We’re not leaving Kansas City,” Rush said. “We had a lot of offers that would have taken us elsewhere. We feel like we can build a world-class startup here. Leveraging the deep roots we have make sense.

“This is huge validation validation from one of the biggest banks in the world.”

The Kansas City-based biometrics startup wants to get rid of the password by using eye print technology through smartphone cameras. The money helps close a Series A round that also involves Sprint, Samsung and Qihoo 360 from China.

This week Powderhook, a free web and mobile service connecting outdoorsmen with places to hunt and fish, closed a $650,000 seed round led by the Nebraska Angels. The funding, which has been secured for a few months, will build Powderhook’s software development team. They’ve already hired four developers, a vice president of customer acquisition and are looking to hire any and all Rails developers and an iOS developer. Funds from the round also will be used to continue expanding Powderhook’s platform.

“Powderhook’s marketplace fills a substantial gap in the outdoors,” said CEO and co-founder Eric Dinger in a press release. “Lack of access to quality hunting and fishing spots is the No. 1 reason people cite for going less often.”

Dinger, whose resume includes exiting his first company, brand and web development firm Thought District,
says the idea for Powderhook grew out of personal experience.

A native of Redfield, S.D., Dinger grew up hunting and fishing on his grandfather’s land near the Sand Lake Refuge outside of rural Hecla, S.D. After leaving to go to high school in Minnesota, and moving to Lincoln for college, Dinger says it’s been harder to find places nearby to hunt and fish.

Nebraska Angels President Bart Dillashaw says the Angels—an affiliated group of individual angel investors—felt Powderhook was the right product model and team, at the opportune time.

“Powderhook is led by a proven entrepreneur and technical co-founder who are passionate about the problems the company seeks to solve,” Dillashaw said in a release. “Coupled with a strong development team and a clear plan of action, we have great confidence in the company’s ability to meet their goals.

“The hunting and fishing industries are massive and in need of the technology Powderhook delivers.”

Six months into its product development, led by co-founder Heath Roehr, Powderhook boasts hunting and fishing locations in every state and 12 countries. In all, more than 265,000 spots and 550 million acres of land are available on the site.